Sarkozy Kicks Off Criminal Investigation Into Blog/Twitter Reports He Had An Affair

from the thin-skinned? dept

And we were always told in the US that we spent too much time worrying about which politician was having affairs, while in France, it was pretty much expected that politicians had mistresses. Yet, apparently, Nicolas Sarkozy is so upset about online rumors, repeated on blogs and on Twitter, that both he and his wife have had affairs, that a criminal investigation has been kicked off. Under what law? Apparently the claim is that this would be a "fraudulent introduction of data into a computer system." That seems like a stretch. These are just internet rumors. Most people let them go. At the very least, I could see a libel claim -- but a criminal investigation for "fraudulent introduction of data into a computer system" just seems like massive abuse of power and overkill.